Knitting Clio’s grades are done, now time for some blogging

Oh my, how time passes — my last post was over two weeks ago! Sorry folks, I’ve been recovering from a minor bike crash and trying to get grades and other end-of-semester stuff done. Hopefully you all were satisfied with the swine flu article. Here’s a round up of some recent articles related to swine flu from Inside Higher Education, since you know from my book that I’m an expert on college health.

Flu days: Like snow days, except for illness. Our university did not close, but we did see more signs telling us to wash our hands.

Swine flu and study abroad: Initially, American programs canceled trips to Mexico, but it wasn’t long before foreign countries were considering quarantine of American students who were going abroad. This is certainly a valuable cultural experience for American students, who are more used to hearing “dirty foreigners” being blamed for diseases. My colleague who is leading a study abroad trip to Japan tells me that things have calmed down and now his students can go through the regular customs and immigration rather than being pulled aside for additional screening.

Paying for health care: No surprise here — 20 percent of traditional age students, and way more non-traditional ones, have no health insurance. So, if they get swine flu, they may not go to a doctor because they can’t afford it.

I suppose I should write an article for IHE or the Chronicle about how this fits into the larger history of colleges and epidemics. Then again, I have to get cracking on the new project since the Rutgers booth at the AAHM meeting was already advertising it as a forthcoming title!